UPDATE: Yesterday, it was announced that David Bazan will be performing at Local 506 on October 15. This is getting ridiculous. I know most people don’t know who David Bazan is, but he’s probably my favorite songwriter of all time and pretty much the only musician who I can say has really truly legitimately played a significant role in shaping my worldview.

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Every now and then I peruse the Cat’s Cradle and Local 506 schedules to try and find a good excuse to go to Chapel Hill for a night/weekend, and to get a good show out of it. Just a few minutes ago was one of those every now and thens. And holy crap is Local 506 killing me right now. Just as I’m getting settled into Norfolk, enjoying my good life here, the 506 goes and bitch-slaps me with a taunt of the awesomeness that is its October(ish) lineup.

Here’s what’s on it…

9/29 – The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, The Depreciation Guild, Cymbals Eat Guitars

10/1 – The Twilight Sad, brakesbrakesbrakes, We Were Promised Jetpacks. (I must be at this show. I ****ing must! With pints and pints of Guinness, of course!)

(Starts at 1:20 mark)

10/6 – A Place to Bury Strangers

10/9 – Titus Andronicus

10/16 – Atlas Sound

10/19 – Japandroids (still probably my favorite album of the year so far by the way)

Oh, and did I mention the most expensive show is a measly twelve bucks?

Congratulations Local 506, you have kicked my ass. Kicked it you have!

Some people are saying this is the best webpage on the internet. I don’t agree. There’s no Chuck Norris, no auto-tuning, and not one single boob. Unless you count those things under the revealing blouses of Dog the Bounty Hunter’s wife. I don’t. So, this is missing some key components to internet greatness.

Do you know where Lee Greenwood will be performing on the 4th of July? Because there couldn’t possibly anywhere more American to be on Saturday, right?

-Planet Earth

Glad you asked, P.E. You’re absolutely right. And wouldn’t you know it… Lee Greenwood will be performing in Norfolk, one mile from my apartment Saturday night. Bam. How do ya like them apples?

True story: We once put “God Bless the USA” on the jukebox at High Park in Raleigh, and the whole place erupted in a sing-along with people jumping up on tables and fist-pumping simultaneously. None of it was rehearsed, we didn’t even know anyone else in the bar, but I was convinced I was in a Corky St. Clair-directed musical for a minute. It was awesome.

Did you hear that Michael Jackson died?! Thoughts on the passing of the King of Pop?

-Johnny C. Lately, Des Moines

Gee golly, nope. Hadn’t heard that.

I had planned on not giving into to a number of people who asked if I was going to post anything on Michael Jackson’s death. The whole thing has me pretty weirded out and I’m afraid I might say something that might inspire more of his fans to kill themselves or who knows what. People are pretty worked about this, and I’m not that worked up, and that’s always a pretty strange place to offer commentary from. But then I decided I really wanted to share Jon Lajoie’s video below with everyone. So, here are my Michael Jackson thoughts.

My initial reaction to the news that Jackson was indeed dead was that I realized that I’d pretty much thought of him as having been dead for the better part of the last two decades. By the mid-90s, the Michael that everyone is now grieving had disappeared and been replaced by a harrowing cautionary tale, some terrifying anthropomorphized alien creature. I’m not saying that to be mean about how weird he looked (but, come on…); I’m just saying that every day that Thing-Michael walked around holding babies off of balconies and what not, he was making it harder to remember that he was famous for being as great an entertainer as America ever saw and not for being some freak with a lot of money who was constantly being accused of molesting children. Especially for those of us who came of age in the 90s and beyond.

The tragedy here isn’t that Michael Jackson died. As Black Santa aptly put it, “That’s what happens at the end of people’s lives. They die.”

No, the tragedy is that a kid had an abusive father who robbed him of his childhood. It’s that that kid grew up without a single, solitary positive person in his life to help him deal with that and to help him understand his wealth. It’s that no one ever demanded he get the help he needed when they realized he had reverted to the mental maturity of an eleven year-old who wanted to live alone in his own version of Disney Land. It’s that the media was happy to observe him as a freak show and a monster, and so were we.

That’s what weirds me out about people being broke up over Michael’s death. For the last 15 years or so, everyone’s been happy to make him a punchline, to talk about how sick it was what he did to those kids, etc. Now, all of a sudden, everyone just wants to remember him before all that. Worse, they’re pretending it never happened. “It” not being Michael’s bizarro transformation, but their own entertained observation of it.

So, I’m having a really hard time buying into most of these people who claim to be so upset about Michael Jackson’s death. Except for maybe those Filipino Prison Thriller guys. If the loss of the important entertainer Michael Jackson is such a big deal to you, you’ve had fifteen years to grieve. Instead, you were making jokes.

Now, as promised, here’s Jon Lajoie’s video on the death of Michael Jackson, which is wildly inappropriate and profane and all that. So don’t watch it with your kids, please.

I went to the Market at Ghent (which is basically a Farm Fresh with fancy signage) tonight to get chicken. The experience was good for two reasons.

1. I got to see their sign that proclaims, “We Will Never Intentionally Disappoint a Customer.” Perfect.

2. As I was standing in line with my chicken and Sam Adams, I hear the customer behind me say, “They pee in the water in Boston.”

I turned to him, unsure. “I’m sorry?”

“Shouldn’t make beer with Boston water. People pee in it.”

“Oh, really? What water should you make beer with?”

“Water from the Colorado Rockies. Or Lake Erie.”

“Lake Erie?”

“Yep.”

I paid and left.

I’m hoping someone can tell me if this info is accurate. Should I not be drinking Sam Adams for fear of urine-tainted water? Also, is Lake Erie as pure as this man suggested? Anyone?

-Dropout

P.S. Sam Adams’ Blackberry Witbier is simply delicious. They should blend it with the Cherry Wheat and yogurt and sell it at Tropical Smoothie. Because Tropical Smoothie drinks would be ten times cooler if they got people unexpectedly drunk. Unless said people were driving. I guess.

Look, I’m sorry. This video is gross. There’s no way around it. It’s taken from a sewer camera under Cameron Village in Raleigh. I have friends that used to live across the street from Cameron Village and now live only blocks away. We buy beer at the Harris Teeter in Cameron Village all the time. And, the kicker, I may be moving down there soon. So this shit (not trying to be profane, this is literally shit we’re talking about) freaks me out.

What the hell is happening in the Raleigh sewers? Monsters? Aliens? Can someone please get David Duchovny down there ASAP? I mean, I try not to be an alarmist overreactor, but my god man, what in the holy terror of a hell is this???

Seriously, if you live in Raleigh area, be on the lookout for something like this trying to sit on your face in the near future: